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Munich chooses open source groupware solution

The German city of Munich will implement Kolab, an open source mail server, calendaring and groupware solution. The consortium of IT service providers that won the city's public tender on Tuesday announced that Munich will implement Kolab across its 15,000 desktops, including about 1000 still using a proprietary operating system.

It makes it one of the main public sector reference for Kolab, confirms Georg Greve founder of the eponymous Zürich-based software firm developing the Kolab software. The groupware solution was originally developed for Germany's Federal Office for Information Security. Kolab is also used by about 36000 students, teachers and staffers at more than twenty schools in the Swiss city of Basel. "We have bigger, commercial clients, but the city of Munich is special."

"We provide Munich with a solution that works on both open source and proprietary operating systems. The city did not insist on an open source solution, but the request emphasised its IT security demands." The city also specified that the system should run on the servers maintained by the city.

The city and the three firms involved in the new solutions will now start migrating the data from the current system to the new groupware solution. The civil servants working for city of Munich will be offered a web-based training, to help them with the switch to the new system.

Munich published its request for tender in Januari 2013. The groupware project is codenamed MigMak (Migration Mail- und Kalender-System) and the solution is expected to be operational by the end of this year.